The point is not to do things for you. The point is that in six months more of it is being done by you, or done in a way that finally works.
Daily living work is the part of occupational therapy that most people picture when they imagine an OT, and it covers more ground than the name suggests.
Self-care — showering, dressing, grooming, managing continence with dignity. Often it is the sequence, the setup or the equipment that needs to change rather than the person's ability.
Cooking and meal preparation — from safe use of a stovetop to a repertoire of five meals someone can actually make on a bad day. We cook in your kitchen, not a demonstration one.
Household routines — laundry, cleaning, keeping on top of a home in a way that is sustainable rather than aspirational.
Budgeting and shopping — planning a shop, managing money, using online ordering where it removes a barrier.
Medication routines — systems that survive a bad week, not just a good one.
Transport and travel training — getting to appointments, using the 788, learning a route, building the confidence to do it alone. On the Peninsula this is a bigger piece of work than it is in the suburbs.
A typical session is practical and in your environment. We do the task together, work out where it breaks down, change something, and try again. Then we write down what worked so it survives after the session ends.
Under the NDIS, this is Capacity Building — Improved Daily Living, the funding category most participants have and the one most often left partly unspent.
Under Support at Home, daily activity work is funded as a clinical support, though usually as a shorter piece of work: an assessment, a set of strategies, and training for the person and their support workers.
Written strategies you can keep — not a report that gets filed. A one-page routine on the fridge is often the most useful thing that comes out of a block of sessions.
Where support workers or family are involved, they get trained too, so what happens on the days we're not there matches what happens on the days we are.
And a progress report at review time, evidencing what changed against the plan goals.
Usually an hour, in your home, doing a real task — making lunch, sorting the week's medication, planning a shop. It is deliberately not a worksheet at a table.
It depends on the goal and where you're starting. We'd rather agree a small block, review honestly at the end of it, and stop if it's not working than book twelve sessions up front.
Yes, and it is often the highest-value part of the work. Strategies only stick if the people who are there four days a week are using them too.
Yes, with your consent, and as much or as little as you want.
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